https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17554





--- Comment #3 from Alex Z. <[email protected]>  2009-02-21 18:42:17 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> Hmmm.  I don't see why this is "modifying aspects of the page history."  It's
> just importing a new, current version at the current time, not in the past.

Export/Import is designed for copying the history or content of a page from one
wiki to another. AFAIK, Import isn't designed so that people can download the
XML docuument, then re-upload it.

> If the MediaWiki API can do this simply, that's great. Where can I see a
> complete example that does search-and-replace in general?  ("In general"
> meaning "you don't have to write a new PHP script for every search/replace
> operation.")  Somehow I wonder, if it were this simple, wouldn't someone
> already have written a search-and-replace Special Page?

Something like <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Replace_Text>? It
doesn't support regex yet, but it does seem to be maintained at least. 
I don't know of any premade PHP scripts, but I know Pywikipedia has one and
writing a simple one shouldn't be too difficult.

1. Define the search expression and replace text
2. Load the list of page to edit from a text file or something
3. Login to the site with action=login
4. Get the pagetext for each from prop=revisions
5. Perform the replacements
6. Save the pages with action=edit

> Also, I think the import solution is better than an API solution in one
> respect: you can see and validate your changes (in the XML file) before 
> import.
>  With the API, if you get your search-and-replace patterns wrong (which is 
> VERY
> easy to do), you've modified your content wrongly. I find that more "scary"
> than modifying an XML file you can check in advance.
> 

If this is that much of a concern, add "save the text to a file or run through
action=parse and load in a browser and wait for user input" before saving in
the above steps.


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